Lead Story

Mr. Wolf has written numerous wistful letters to lefty sites over the last several years, claiming his demonstration is not political, trying to increase participation — alas, without credibility, nor success. As the DC Chapter's extensive documentation shows, their numbers have fallen off and stayed lower than the number of Free Republic troop supporters for years now, while DC Chapter's numbers continue to grow. It's a really hard sell, even for lefties, to protest the war in the faces of volunteer soldiers who are wounded, and Mr. Wolf is not doing well at it.

This week, in fact, the Reuters news organization ran an article headlined, "U.S. Protests Shrink While Antiwar Sentiment Grow s." Anti-war organizers feud among themselves, reporter Andy Sullivan said, "and participants question the effectiveness of the street protests." Astonishingly, this mainstream media article at last pointed up the so-called "peace" movement leadership's ties to the communist Worker's World Party and its splinter, Party for Socialism and Liberation. What it doesn't mention is the dedicated counterprotest presence of FReepers, Gathering of Eagles, Protest Warriors, Vets for Victory, MoveAmericaForward and hundreds of other grassroots groups determined not to allow another war to be won on the ground but lost by the media and Congress, as had happened in the Vietnam era.

I am posting your Lead Story on my website(s), with a call to action for the Bay Area supporters of our military men and women who are sacrificing every single day for our country.

I'm going to alert the KSFO audience on Monday when I return to the airwaves and read the deeply moving letter of response from Captain Richard Lund who is a fine example of the caliber of troops we have guarding our backs in this country and in Iraq.

After this disgusting attack at the Marine office in Shattuck Square, Captain Lund issued an open letter to the Berkeley City Council. This quote from your website touched me deeply:

"Recruiters are Traitors." Please explain this one. How exactly am I a traitor? Was I a traitor when I joined the Marine Corps all those years ago? Is every Marine, therefore, a traitor? Was I a traitor during my two stints in Iraq? Was I a traitor when I was delivering humanitarian aid to the victims of the tsunami in Sumatra? Or do you only consider me a traitor while I am on this job?

Um, Captain Lund, the anti-war lunatics DO consider you a traitor. The rest of the world does not.

I am going to petition the City Council to enforce rules and regulation regarding criminal trespass and vandalism.

I am going to go there myself, personally, to draw attention to this hateful action by a fringe group who has absolutely NO moral authority –whose members include Susan (Medea) Benjamin, who engaged in anarchy at the WTO in Seattle, in between organizing her Code Pink Pepto-Bismol crowd who like to get naked for peace.

I do not hold out much hope from the Berkeley City Council. It is comprised of left-over Hippies from the Sixties who still think it's the Summer of Love.

However, Mayor Tom Bates, has a distinctly different view of free speech that our military has fought valiantly for –he was convicted of stealing one thousand copies of the a conservative student-run newspaper.

According to the Stanford Daily newspaper…

"Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has decided to plead guilty for the theft and subsequent disposal of 1,000 copies of the Nov. 4 issue of the Daily Californian, which contained an endorsement of his opponent, Shirley Dean. A month after the incident, Bates is developing legislation to prevent this type of theft from reoccurring.

Regardless of the power structure in Berkeley, we will NOT let this insult to our troops remain unanswered. Not now. Not ever.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, attending Fleet Week festivities on the Marina Green on Saturday, lashed out at conservative critics who mocked San Francisco's consideration of a measure to ban the Navy's Blue Angels from flying over the city during this week's celebration.

He cited that criticism and reports that the city turned down a Marine request to make a television recruitment commercial in the Financial District as examples of what he called exploitation by conservatives who don't "allow the facts to get in their way."

"Shame on the extreme right," Newsom told The Chronicle. "I am sick and tired of this city being depicted as anti-military. The extreme right exploits the exception, when I believe there is a predominant respect in this city for the military, vets and those serving today."

This City is anti-military. I don't care how you spin it, but the City of San Francisco has been hostile to the Military ever since the 60's. Mayor Newsom has a very short memory — the "ban the Blue Angels' stunt by Daly and preventing the Marines from filming are only two recent events. Prior to that you had the Board of Supes preventing the US Navy and Admiral Toney from cleaning up and making use of Hunter's Point back in the 80's and the snubbing of the USS IOWA when the Navy wanted to homeport the ship in SF. More recently, moves to ban JROTC and recruitment from schools continue the pattern. No matter how the Mayor explains or spins recent events, there is a long history of SF being anti-military. Maybe only the few remaining [in] SF can remember.